


The One Where Brian Doesn't Worry

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [16]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Deaf Character, Epilepsy, Fever, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Seizures, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 00:30:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15303483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: You are so fucking sick,I signed on him, like one of those acting class games where you're somebody else's arms. Shut up, my high school had a drama requirement. I mean, so did Justin's, but mine was more “take an elective” and less “experience a traumatic hate crime that will haunt you for the rest of your life,” but six on one, half a dozen on the other.





	The One Where Brian Doesn't Worry

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place immediately after "The One Where Brian Isn't There."

I woke up what turned out to be ten hours later with Justin's feverish self draped over me like a heated blanket. He was snoring softly and his right arm, draped over my chest, was twitching.

“Cut it out,” I said to it.

It didn't.

“I mean it,” I said, fixing it with my best death stare. “Give it a rest now.”

Justin coughed in his sleep and shivered, so I pulled the blanket over him and rubbed my fist against his chest, thinking.

Coffee. Coffee sounded good.

**

One thing they don't tell you, or maybe they do tell you and I wasn't fucking listening, is that you really can get used to anything. Anything at all. You know that guy in Greek mythology, Prometheus, who stole fire and so they chained him to a rock and he had his liver eaten out by some bird every day? I bet eventually even he got used to being a bird appetizer. He probably woke up every morning and spread himself out to give the bird better access. At some point, it doesn't even hurt anymore.

And nobody has me chained spread-eagled on a rock, so comparatively I'd say shit is pretty livable around here.

And then enter the tourists.

“I don't understand what the fuck is going on,” Michael said. “Didn't you say you were taking him to the hospital?”

I stood in the kitchen and sipped my coffee, glancing through the paper. “Yeah, when he wakes up.”

“Who the fuck goes to the hospital when it's _convenient?_ ” Michael said.

Outsider shit, I suppose. I'm not saying Michael doesn't have hospital experience; Ben's had a couple of health scares over the years, but they've always been just that, scares. Meanwhile when Justin was losing his hearing, we were trekking over to the hospital all the time, to have him under supervision when he started new meds, or to get him a fluid IV when the nausea was kicking his ass, whatever the fuck. 

“He's really sick,” Michael said.

“Yeah, and I'm not really concerned he's going to get less sick between now and when we go. I think the doctors will still be suitably impressed.”

“That's not—” 

Well, obviously that wasn't what he meant, I'm not a fucking moron. “Once we get there they're gonna hook him up to all this shit and put him through all these tests. He should rest while he can.”

Michael shook his head. “I don't understand how you're so calm.”

I didn't know how to explain it to him. Yeah, I was worried when I was across the equator and Justin wasn't answering his phone, sure, but now I was half a generous-but-still-New-York-sized apartment away from him. What the fuck was going to happen that we couldn't handle when I was right there? What exactly did Michael think Justin could go through that we hadn't dealt with before? 

We heard coughing from the bedroom and the sound of Justin moving around. I rolled my eyes. “Is he actually trying to get out of bed?” I said, and crossed over to the bedroom door. **What the fuck are you doing?**

He was sitting up in bed, his hair mussed, his t-shirt damp with sweat. And he was glaring at me like I was the Antichrist, which amused me.

 **I called you,** he signed, left-handed, his right still twitching in his lap. **You didn't come.**

**Well, I couldn't see you, dear, I was in the kitchen.**

**With my _voice_ ,** he signed, looking every inch like he was about to drag his delirious ass out of bed and kick my ass.

 **Say something,** I said, and he did, and God, it was the most pathetic, hoarse little squeak you've ever heard. **Yeah, you lost your voice, Sunshine.**

He made some noise that was probably supposed to be a groan and flopped back on the bed.

I went over and helped him sit up again. I tried to uncurl the fingers on his right hand, but he pulled it away from me and shook his head. **Hurts.**

 **Yeah.** I kissed his temple. He was still burning up.

 **Where did you go?** It was weird watching him sign with his left hand. Like hearing him talk with somebody else's voice.

**Just the living room. Michael's out there pulling a Deb. I think he's about half an hour away from calling an ambulance. That I will make him pay for.**

Justin dropped his head into my neck. **I forgot Michael's here.**

**Well, you've probably fried most of your brain cells by now, so that's not surprising.**

**Don't call an ambulance.**

**In Manhattan, are you kidding? We'll take a cab.**

**Okay,** he said, and I was relieved he seemed to have dropped the notion that we were going to Urgent Care instead of straight to the ER. With they way his hand had been jerking constantly since he got sick, they would have sent us straight to the hospital anyway for a stronger anticonvulsant, and it would have just been an annoying time suck.

 **Want some breakfast first?** I asked.

He nodded.

I gave him a quick kiss and went to the doorway of the bedroom. “Hey, Michael?”

Michael appeared from the kitchen, wringing his hands. “Yeah?”

I flashed him my most dazzling smile. “Can you make pancakes?”

**

The fork shook in Justin's left hand. He hit me on the leg with his useless right until I looked at him. “Make him stop staring at me,” he croaked out, almost soundlessly.

I turned to Michael. “Stop watching him like he's about to drop dead.”

Michael threw up his hands. “How did you even understand that?”

 **Now I know what lipreading is like,** I said. **Turns out it's not that hard, drama queen,** I said to Justin.

“Bite me,” Justin said.

I shook my head. **Making everyone learn sign language for you and shit...**

Justin painstakingly cut another bite of pancakes with the side of his fork. He was panting from the effort of staying upright, and eating, and fucking existing, and I had my foot casually propped up on the back of his stool to catch him if he started to slip.

 **How high is his fever?** Michael asked.

 **We don't have a thermometer,** I said. **I assume they'll check at the hospital.**

Justin slowly reached out for his juice glass. A shiver ran through him, so I made sure he was stable on the stool and went and grabbed the blanket from the bedroom. He was dangerously close to falling off the stool when I got back, so I righted him while I wrapped the blanket around his shoulders and stayed there to keep him in place, my arms around him from behind.

 **You are so fucking sick,** I signed on him, like one of those acting class games where you're somebody else's arms. Shut up, my high school had a drama requirement. I mean, so did Justin's, but mine was more “take an elective” and less “experience a traumatic hate crime that will haunt you for the rest of your life,” but six on one, half a dozen on the other.

Justin kind of collapsed, with me there behind him to hold him up, and coughed for awhile. I tightened my grip around him and rubbed his chest.

“Brian,” Michael said, looking desperate. I glared at him.

I kept my hands on Justin and came around next to him. **Justin,** I said. **Are you going to die in the next five minutes?**

He shook his head.

 **Good,** I said. **Then finish your breakfast.**

Justin nodded and picked his fork back up. Michael and I stared each other down until he finally sighed and went to load the dishwasher.

 **You're torturing him,** Justin said to me.

**I can't help it. It's so easy.**

**He loves me. You should be happy.**

Somehow that struck me as the sweetest thing Justin had ever said. I can't really explain it. It wasn't the deepest or the most meaningful or whatever, it was just...fucking sweet, and I kind of cocked my head and looked at him and just thought about the fact that this kid knew that people loved him and knew that I wanted people to love him, and that he was able to translate all of that from Michael staring at him and me asking if he was dying.

He might be a little shit, but he's a sweet kid, really.

 **I don't look happy?** I said.

**You look okay.**

I kissed his lips, sticky with syrup. **I'm happy to be home. Eat, okay? You never eat the hospital food.**

He took a shaky breath. **I'm scared.**

**You don't have to do a thing. I'm going to take care of it.**

**I feel really bad now,** he said, and yeah, that got to me a little. Sue me, despite what gay Pittsburgh would have you believe, I really am a mere mortal. I stood up and wrapped my arms around him.

 **You don't have to eat any more,** I signed after I hugged him. **We can go now.**

Justin changed his shirt, I left Michael money and then some to get a cab to the airport, Michael hugged Justin and impulsively kissed his cheek, and I took the little waif to the hospital.

**

I gave my little speech at the front desk that I knew I'd be repeating eight million times before the day was over. “This is Justin Taylor. March eleventh, 1983. He has a fever and epilepsy and he's been having small seizures. And he's Deaf and we need an interpreter.”

I hate interpreting Justin's doctor's appointments with a fervor I usually save for country music or the Gay and Lesbian Center. It's too much jargon, it's too high-stakes if I get something wrong—someday I'm going to touch the wrong finger and sign seven instead of eight and someone will fuck up his dosage of something and his brain will explode, and one of the medications he's allergic to is oxazolidinedione and do you really trust yourself to fingerspell that right—and it means that instead of being there as an advocate for Justin, or God forbid as support for him, I have to be a neutral party, and that's just not how this little arrangement we have goes.

The nurse at the reception desk told us an interpreter would be down soon, but our stay in the waiting room was short because the continuous seizures had everyone real excited, so we still didn't have an interpreter when we were bundled over to one of those curtained-off cuticles in the ER. They took his temperature—an impressive 103.5, basically the only time Justin's ever done anything by halves—and started him on IV fluids because they said he was dehydrated, which I felt strangely guilty about. They'd had him change into a gown, and that plus the IV made him look a lot sicker than he had back a the apartment, and I had to fight the irrational urge to bring him back there.

I'd had them page Justin's neurologist but he wasn't here yet, and since we'd only lived in New York a few months at that point I didn't know him well enough to know how soon he'd be here. The on-call doctor ordered an EEG and an MRI which any idiot can do anyway—hell, it's exactly what I would have ordered, if these hospitals would finally wise up and let me call the shots for this boy—so there wasn't really much of a rush. Except we still didn't have an interpreter, so I had to stand there and sign all these questions to Justin about his sleeping habits, his seizure symptoms, how long he'd been sick. And with Justin's lack of voice and foggy brain and one working hand, it was taking him a long time to sign out the answers, and it was frustrating as fuck because of course I knew the answers already, and I still had to go through the process of dragging them out of him. 

At one point the doctor said to me, “You know, you can answer these questions yourself if you know. It would save some time.”

I stared at him. “I'm not the patient.”

“I know, but—” 

I clenched my jaw. “Would you normally allow the patient's partner to answer for them, when they were fully capable of answering themselves? I wasn't here when he got sick. I don't know what his seizures feel like. So either get us the fucking interpreter we asked for or we can continue.”

He sighed. “What medications are you taking?” he asked, and I took a deep breath through my nose and watched Justin slowly fingerspell drugs I knew by heart.

 **You need to chill,** Justin said, after the doctor was gone. **They're going to get a bouncer and kick you out.**

 **Yeah, they would have bouncers but not interpreters.** I sat in the chair by the bed and tried to, in Justin's words, chill.

Justin signed a quick **I love you** and slipped his shitty right hand into mine. **Did you do this when I was bashed? Rage at the doctors?**

So, okay, this is a thing he'd been doing lately. And I knew it was because of therapy, even though Justin hadn't said as much. I know it was good for him. I knew there were still parts of this story he didn't know, and that that wasn't healthy for him, and that he deserved to know.

That didn't mean I wanted to talk about it. But the thing is...when it was just us? It wasn't as hard as you might think.

You can get used to anything, including the fact that your partner was beaten almost to death in front of your eyes two minutes after saying he'd had the best night of his life.

I brushed his hair off his hot forehead. **No, I was just in shock then.**

He nodded.

**And that was nothing like this, really. They took you away the second we got there, brought you into surgery. No sitting around like this.**

**VIP service.**

I kissed his cheek. **Yeah.**

 **I bet you looked handsome,** he said. **Sitting in the waiting room in your suit.**

 **I was a bloody, snotty mess,** I said.

He shook his head. **You're pretty when you cry.**

I snorted. **Liar.**

**I wish I could have been there for you.**

**You were a little busy in surgery.**

**No, just lying there really.** He leaned into my hand. **I'm here for you now.**

 **Sure are,** I said, not because I needed him to hold me up or anything, but because I knew he just needed reassurance that this wasn't like the bashing. He probably felt worse than he did any of the last dozen times we'd been through the little hospital thing, and the fever was probably making this seem a lot more fucked up for him than it actually was. 

Plus I knew it helped him to feel like he had a job. Justin's not great in crisises, never has been. He's outstanding in the aftermath, once the storm is over, but he freezes up when shit is actually going down, and sometimes you just have to assign him a thing to do to keep him from shutting down. If he thought he needed to hold my hand through this...maybe it wasn't the worst thing in the world to let him believe it, as much as it irked me when anyone, Justin included, tried to make Justin's health about anyone but Justin.

 **Are you scared now?** he asked.

Still, I wasn't going to lie to the boy. I shook my head. 

**I believe you,** he said.

**Good.**

 

**

I'll admit I got a little antsy when he was gone for the MRI, but that was mostly because he still didn't have a fucking interpreter with him. He's allergic to the contrast dye, and even though that was on his chart, obviously, and on one of the twenty paper bracelets they put around his wrist with a name of a drug he can't have, the thought of Justin pinned to a table with no voice while people talked around him kind of freaked me out. He'd been moved to a real room by that time, and I alternated between pacing around it and being anywhere else, the cafeteria, the vending machines, the waiting room, anywhere.

I figured now was as good a time as any to call his mother.

“How long do you think he'll be there?” she asked.

“They might let us go today,” I said. “Maybe overnight.”

“How's he doing?” I knew she asking if he was freaking out. The kid, understandably, is not a huge fan of hospitals.

“He's okay,” I said. “I think right now he feels too shitty to really care too much about anything but feeling better.”

She sighed. “Yeah. How are you?”

I scratched my neck uncomfortably. “I'm fine. I'm worried about his allergies, but I always am when he's here.”

“It'll be nice when Daphne's a doctor,” she said.

“Oh, God yeah. I'm gonna make her do all his shit.”

That probably spurred the ridiculous conversation I had with Justin after he got back from the MRI. He's always groggy after them—lying perfectly still in a claustrophobic tube for an hour is kind of disorienting—and he was curled up on his side in his bed. They were coming to stick the electrodes on him soon for the EEG, so this was our last foray before he looked like something out of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

 **Maybe I should go to medical school,** I said.

He smiled. **Yeah, that could be fun.**

**You'd help me study?**

**Sure. You'd steal me all sorts of narcotics?**

**Oh, absolutely.**

He stretched. **Where do you want to go?**

**Columbia, probably.**

Justin looked at me dubiously. **Pretty good school, Kinney. Not sure you can hack it.**

I climbed up on the bed with him and helped him curl up against my chest. **I can do anything,** I said. **Thought you knew that by now.**

 **I probably do,** he said. **I'm delirious, remember?**

I kissed him. **I forgot.**

**That doesn't bode well for medical school.**

**You have to know fevers to be a doctor?**

**I'm pretty sure.**

**Damn,** I said. **So much for that dream.**

 **I'm sorry,** Justin said. **I know you loved the idea for a whole ninety seconds.**

 **Yeah. Longer than I've loved almost anything.** I kissed him. **Almost.**

Gimme a break. Kid was sick.

**

I sat in the chair with my ankles crossed on the bed and watched the screen that was recording the EEG. It was steady most of the time, small spikes, but periodically they'd get larger, sharper, and Justin's hand would start twitching again. 

I kicked him during one of the spikes. He opened one eye. 

I held up my newspaper. **Hey there, Doc Brown. Got an eight letter word for 'typical political talk?'**

He closed his eyes, and I watched the EEG dance, chewing the inside of my mouth, but he opened them a minute later.

 **Rhetoric,** he fingerspelled, slowly.

 **Rhetoric.** I smiled a little and studied the puzzle. **That's very good. 'Greek salad staple,' four letters. That's gotta be feta, right?**

He nodded sleepily.

**'Princess who was captured by Jabba the Hut.' I know that one and I haven't even seen those fucking movies.**

**Can I have some water?** he asked.

I took the cup off the nightstand and held the straw to his lips, and he sipped slowly. His eyes glowed with fever. **Give me another,** he said as I settled back in the chair.

**'Enthusiasm.' Four letters. Second letter's e.**

He thought, then smiled. **Zeal.**

 **You're a smart kid,** I said, and glanced up at the EEG. It was calm again. 

**Another.**

**'Canada's third largest city.'**

He shrugged. **How many letters?**

**Six.**

**Ottawa?**

**That works.**

**I'm not sure. Write it in pencil,** he said.

**No way.**

**

Justin's neurologist came to tell us the results of the EEG. Two guesses if he had an interpreter with him, and you only need one of them.

He shook my hand, and Justin's left, but when he started to talk I cut him off.

“We're not doing this without an interpreter here,” I said, signing for Justin.

Dr. Pearson nodded. “I know this isn't ideal, but I really need to talk you through this results so we can get started with treatment.”

“I understand that, but you're standing there with a face like you have bad news and that means I need to be sitting there holding his fucking hand, not interpreting. So please, go out there, pull whatever doctor strings you have to pull, and get us a fucking interpreter.”

“Brian,” Justin croaked.

I looked at him.

“Just have him tell you,” he said. “And you can tell me after. You don't have to interpret.”

 **No,** I said.

**It's just wasting time. It's fine.**

**This is about you. I shouldn't know before you do.**

**Please?** he said. “It's okay,” he said to Pearson. “I give whatever permission I need to give, just...tell him, it's fine.”

So I stood there and listened while Pearson told me Justin had an ear and sinus infection—what did I tell you, never anything by halves—and they'd need to give him the one antibiotic he can tolerate and, since he's allergic to fucking everything but aspirin, somehow, load him up on that to bring the fever down. The real concern, obviously, was the seizures, and normally they'd dose him with benzos to stop them, but that's not an option for Justin, so he wanted to try high doses of something called fosphenytoin until he stopped seizing, but it's a heavy drug with some potentially nasty side effects and there was, of course, no guarantee he wouldn't have an allergic reaction.

“Okay,” I said, hating every fucking second of this, hating talking about Justin right in front of him, hating talking in front of Justin _period._ “Okay, do it.”

He nodded and left, with an apologetic smile at Justin, and I breathed out and sat next to the bed and repeated it all to Justin. He watched and nodded and asked a few questions that I answered as best I could.

“They're supposed to give me an interpreter,” he said, quietly, because what else could he say?

**I know. I'm going to sue fucking everyone.**

**Everyone?**

**Yeah. Everyone we've ever met.**

Justin nodded and kissed my hand.

**

The IV was in, there were ice packs under Justin's arms and between his legs, and he was panting.

 **You know Latin?** I asked. **'Letter after epsilon,' four letters. Are you having trouble breathing, what's up?**

**I'm just cold.**

**So you're panting?**

**Yeah. I don't know.**

I put my hand on top of his head. **What do you think? Third letter's T, you can do it.**

**I don't want to.**

**I don't care, come on.**

He shivered so violently I thought he was seizing for a second. 

**I know,** I said. **I know this sucks.** I rubbed my palm up and down his chest. 

He sniffled a little and fingerspelled **Zeta.**

**That's my good boy. 'Minus,' four letters.**

He choked on a sob. “Less.”

**

I don't even remember falling asleep, but I woke up at some point with my arms and head folded on the bed next to Justin and his hand gently shaking my shoulder. I sat up, cursing my fucking back. **You okay?**

He nodded, and pointed at the foot of the bed, where Pearson stood with some young guy.

“His fever's down two degrees,” Pearson said, and the guy, thank everything that is holy, was an interpreter. Swear to God, if Justin hadn't already made an honest man out of me, I would have proposed to the fucker then and there. “The seizures have stopped. He's going to need antibiotics for another ten days, but you can do that from home.”

 **We can go?** I signed. Let the interpreter do the work. I wasn't here for Pearson.

He nodded. “I want you home from work until you're fever-free for twenty-four hours, Justin, okay? And listen to your body after that. Your brain needs time to rest and recover.”

 **Can I ask him a question?** I asked Justin.

He nodded.

 **The seizure at the start of all this,** I said. **The one he was alone for. He's never been out of it after one like he was for that, and he said he doesn't usually feel that bad. We...can assume that was a larger one, right? A...what's it called?**

“Tonic-clonic,” Pearson said.

I nodded.

“I don't want to speculate,” he said. “But it's definitely concerning, and it's something we're just going to need to be keep an eye on.”

 **He's never had one of those before,** I said. **Except for right after his initial head injury.**

Justin gave me a strange look.

 **Right?** I asked him. **There haven't been others?**

He shook his head.

 **So what does that mean?** I said. **Does it mean he's getting worse?**

“Probably not,” Pearson said. “Again, I don't want to speculate. Epilepsy is very variable. Someone having a type of seizure they've never had before isn't uncommon. And it doesn't mean it's going to happen again.”

**So we just wait and see.**

“We wait and see.”

I looked at Justin, who nodded.

 **Okay,** I said.

**

Justin slept in the cab home and was still groggy when we got to the apartment. Which was full of groceries.

Justin chuckled. “Fucking Michael.”

I helped him get settled in bed and gave him a slow kiss. He pawed at me when I tried to pull away.

 **I'm not fucking you right now,** I told him. **You will die.**

“Good way to go, though,” he said. His voice was starting to come back. He kept batting and pulling at me until I relented and lay down next to him on the bed. 

**How are you feeling?** I asked him.

 **Pretty crappy,** he admitted. **My ears hurt.**

 **How about here?** I asked, and pushed on his sinuses with two fingers. He whined and pushed me away, and I chuckled. **I think this is all because you didn't take your allergy meds, y'know. Pollen season started and your face exploded.**

He yawned. **You're the one who wanted to live close to the park.**

I rubbed up and down his back. **I should start calling the caravan. Michael must have spread the news of your imminent demise. My phone started blowing up a few hours ago.**

He groaned, and I stood up and headed to the kitchen to make the calls. Before I left, though, his little voice went, “When did I have a seizure?”

I turned around. I tilted my head and said, **Would you like me to list them all?** even though I knew what he meant.

“Was it in the garage?” he asked.

I nodded a little. **Before the ambulance got there.**

“Did you call the ambulance first?”

I sighed and sat at the bottom of the bed, pulling Justin's feet into my lap. **Yeah. 911. They had me stay on the line, so I didn't call anyone else until I was in the ambulance. Your mom first, then Michael.**

“Did anyone else come to the garage? I always picture you alone the whole time.”

I shook my head. **People came pretty quickly. Someone came out after...I don't know, two minutes, three? And then there were a ton of people. Daphne.** I always try not to think about her, kneeling on the pavement with me, getting blood all over her pretty pink dress. It doesn't fit with the Daphne I know.

 **You know what I always wonder?** he said.

 **A lot, apparently,** I said, because I didn't know how to not joke right now.

He smiled a little. **What you told the police when they talked to you. How you told them you were related to me.**

**I believe I said we were “seeing each other.”**

He laughed at that. **Seeing each other. Seeing each other naked, maybe.**

I lay him back gently on the bed and carefully climbed on top of him, keeping my weight off his body. He was breathing in these congested little sighs, like a baby animal. His hair was soft under my hand, and he looked up at me so sleepy and trusting, his fingers trailing up and down my sides.

We stayed like that for a while. Seeing each other.

**

Justin's recovery was slow. The fever lingered, and he spent days working his way through tissue boxes faster than I could buy them and falling asleep in front of the TV. But he didn't have any more seizures.

 **Wild suggestion, I know,** I told him, watching him languish on the couch. **But what if you took a shower at some point?**

He threw a balled up tissue at me.

The fever kept going up at night. He'd wake up shivering, and I'd wake up with his hot face pressed against my neck. 

I switched on the light. **You're doing it again.**

**What, being sick?**

I kissed his nose. **Yeah.**

**

 **How do you stay calm?** he asked me, a few nights later. His fever had finally broken a few hours ago, so we'd started the countdown for him to go back to work. My Australia time off had come to an end, so I was headed back the next day.

 **I'm like the Hulk,** I said. **I'm never calm.**

**You scoff at Star Wars and then quote Avengers to me.**

We were eating Chinese food at the coffee table, stretched out on the floor pillows. Justin was still sneezy and said his ears hurt when he changed positions, but other than that he was almost well.

 **I keep thinking about when you were in the hospital,** Justin said. **I was a mess.**

**That was different. You had no idea what was going on. I was with you, I knew you were fine.**

**And I think I cried every minute you weren't looking at me when you had cancer.**

I put down my chopsticks. **I didn't know that.**

He winced. **Sorry.**

 **You held it together for me, though,** I said. **That's all I'm doing.**

**So you're going to go to work tomorrow and lock the office and cry?**

I thought about that. **No, I guess not.**

**See, it's not the same.**

**I don't know,** I said. **I guess I just do what I need to do and try not to...I don't know. Think about it.**

Like I said: you can get used to anything.

Justin chewed slowly, watching me.

 **Oh yeah, and what's that look?** I said.

**Nothing, I just think it's weird that the whole narrative is that _I'm_ the sick one.**

**You don't look sick to me,** I said, and I tackled him onto the cushions and yanked down his pants and made up for lost time.

**

Work went okay. My brain drifted every so often to the possibility of Justin seizing in the apartment in a puddle of blood, and at one particularly neurotic moment I considered calling him and seeing if he'd come to the office and just...be here, but I shook it off quickly. We had a new client who gave me bedroom eyes for thirty minutes through a meeting and a blow job for five minutes afterwards, so that did a lot to keep my mind off everything. And when I got back to the apartment Justin had put the leftovers of the lasagna Michael made for us—that guy—and the whole place smelled like heaven, and he was messing around with oil pastels at his desk and I thought...okay. Okay.

Six hours later, I dreamed about him seizing on a garage floor in a puddle of blood and woke up tasting acid with Justin's hands on my shoulders. “Hey, hey,” he was saying. “Okay, it's all right. Hey, baby, hey.”

I dropped my forehead down to my knees and clung to him with both hands.

“Okay,” he said, smoothing his palm over my hair. “Okay. There it is.”


End file.
